In a managed environment, updates for one or more managed machines can be managed by one or more managing machines, and often by a single managing machine. As used herein, machines can be physical or virtual computing machines or other computing configurations that can be updated in a manner similar to physical or virtual machines. As an example, the managing and managed machines can be running server and client components of computing environment management software, such as Microsoft's System Center Essentials information technology (IT) systems management software.
As used herein, a managed environment is an environment where one or more managing machines manage updates for one or more managed machines. The managing machine(s) can also manage other aspects of the managed machines, or such other aspects could be managed by one or more other machines. The managed machines can operate as one or more of many different types of machines in computing environments, such as server machines, client machines, peer machines, etc.
In a managed environment, a user (often an IT professional) typically manually selects from a product list those software products for which updates will be obtained for the environment. The product list can contain a large number of product areas (such as Microsoft's Windows® operating system, Microsoft's Office productivity software, etc.) and specific products and/or product versions in each area (such as Windows® XP operating system with service pack 2). To select the products, the user typically manually reviews software usage patterns in the environment and decides the products for which to obtain updates. The user can then enter update selections by entering appropriate settings in update management software, such as Microsoft's Windows® Server Update Services software.
Update categories corresponding to the selections can then be obtained from an update source, such as the Microsoft Update software update source. Update categories can include software updates that apply to particular software companies, software products, groups of software products, and/or versions of software products. The update categories can include one or more human language versions (English, French, Japanese, etc.) of the updates, which can be provided as specified in the software update selection settings.